One Summer: America, 1927

Product Details

In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth (so famous that Minnesota consider renaming itself after him).

It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth and an almost impossible amount more.

In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that have made him our favorite writer of narrative non-fiction, he rolls out an unforgettable cast of vivid and eccentric personalities to bring to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage and changed the world forever.

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Reviews

Rated 4 out of
5 by
Quality_Time from
A good read.Bryson does an admirable job documenting a specific time in history, and showing us a moment in the lives of the most influential people of the day.

Date published: 2014-03-07

Rated 5 out of
5 by
David_Cavaco from
Bryson Gets Better!Bryson is one of the best writers out there able to entertain and educate on a wide array of subjects that may appear unrelated at first. His latest offering is a fascinating trip down memory lane to 1927 when America changed following the Charles Lindbergh flight across the Atlantic. That summer, radio, television, Al Capone, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey etc...entered our collective conscience. Despite its size, the book reads so well that I finished it during my Christmas holidays. Read everything by Bill Bryson, he is a writer for the ages.

Date published: 2013-12-31

Rated 3 out of
5 by
Readhead from
Not his bestI have read all of Bill Bryson's other books, and have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed them all. One Summer, although full of facts (some interesting, others not) about 1927, felt like a long, dull car ride where one keeps asking "when are we going to get there?" This is the first Bill Bryson book that did not keep me wanting to read, and I put it down after the third tedious chapter.

Date published: 2013-12-02

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Christine_L from
ExcellentThe summer of 1927 was amazingly rife with historic and newsworthy events. Mr. Bryson manages to bring these events together in this factual, well-researched and entertaining narrative. Most of the events he brings forth in the book are events of which I was well aware, but never put together the short time span in which they all took place. The summer of 1927 saw Charles Lindbergh make the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight; Alvin Kelly broke the flagpole-sitting record when he sat up high in New Jersey for 12 days; the Mississippi basin flooded with torrential rains; secret bank meetings pretty much ensured a depression, and Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run. From Al Capone to Al Jolson and from prohibition to eugenics, Mr. Bryson doesn’t miss a thing.
This is the first of Mr. Bryson’s books that I have read and let me tell you, it will definitely not be last. He brings these events together in a smooth narrative that is entertaining and informative. Read by Mr. Bryson himself, I picked up the audio version of this book. Not only does Mr. Bryson write a marvelous glimpse into One Summer of history but narrates it superbly.
The only question I was left with at the end of this book … how is it that Mr. Bryson was seemingly the first to pick up on the significance of the summer in 1927? Or, can one arbitrarily pick a year and a season and find that equally interesting and significant things took place?

– More About This Product –

One Summer: America, 1927

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10: 0385661657

ISBN - 13: 9780385661652

From the Publisher

In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth (so famous that Minnesota consider renaming itself after him).

It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone&rsquo;s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth and an almost impossible amount more.

In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that have made him our favorite writer of narrative non-fiction, he rolls out an unforgettable cast of vivid and eccentric personalities to bring to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage and changed the world forever.

About the Author

BILL BRYSON''s bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, I''m a Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country, A Short History of Nearly Everything (which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize), The Life and Times of the ThunderboltKid, and At Home. He lives in England with his wife and children. The author lives in Norfolk, England.

Editorial Reviews

“Bryson gets right to it, dancing the Charleston with his crisp, evocative prose through portraits and anecdotes of characters big and small. . . . At its best, the prose fizzes like just-poured champagne.” — The Globe and Mail “Bryson is a master of the sidelong, a man who can turn obscurity into hilarity with seemingly effortless charm – and One Summer: America 1927 is an entertaining addition to a body of work that is at its best when it celebrates the unexpected and the obscure. . . . This is a jolly jalopy ride of a book; Bryson runs down the byways of American history and finds diversion in every roadside stop.” — Financial Times “This splendid book, written in the breezy and humorous style that has come to be Bryson''s trademark, is sure to delight readers steeped in the history of the period as well as those looking to acquaint themselves with it for the first time.” — Huffington Post “Bill Bryson is a true master of popular narrative. Over the course of his career, he has bestowed a beautiful clarity on even the most recondite of subjects, such as science or linguistics. With this book, he proves once again that he is able to juggle any number of different balls – the boxing career of Jack Dempsey, the origins of the Wall Street Crash, the history of the Ku Klux Klan – and create spellbinding patterns while never letting a single one drop.” — Daily Mail